Gifts for the Ignorant
by platos.shore
Summary: "You are our last hope, Harry." "Might I suggest drawing up a will for yourself then?" "This is serious my boy." "I pity you if you think I was being anything but. And Headmaster? I'm not your boy." In which the Boy-Who-Lived began as the Girl-Who-Died, and the wizarding world is left with a savoir that has no interest in saving.
1. The Gift

_Momma once told me when I was young_

It hurt.

Oh god, did it _hurt_.

Metal on bone on pavement on concrete-

Make it stop!

Please.

_Please_ make it stop.

_PleasepleasepLEase_….?

_That God watches over us_

He was trying to speak to me, I think. Trying really hard.

I wish I could hear him.

I wish I could see.

I wish I could feel anything and everything but the agony drowning me the cold sleeping through my limbs the fingers going in _ohgodwherethosehisfindg-_

_That when we needed him most_

I remember someone screaming.

They sounded young.

Young and afraid.

There's someone over me too… he seems to be screaming as well. His eyes are too dark and too red for such a pretty face.

He's crying.

Screaming and crying.

_He would answer_

_We weren't meant to know how he worked, she had said_

"Hon-"

Cold. Cold. Cold. It's so cold.

"Sta- … wi-... DON-!"

_He would take care of us_

_Regardless if we believed_

The pain had finally stopped.

I was left listless, floating in an empty space that had no title nor name.

I couldn't be happier.

It stopped.

The pain had stopped.

It was warm here. Too warm maybe? Maybe too cold… I couldn't decide. I couldn't think.

I was empty.

Empty of thought.

Empty of pain.

I was happy.

_I died an non-believer_

_There were too many wrongs in the world_

_Not enough right_

_The thought of such an existence being the fault of a god meant to protect us and help us rather than our own human nature made me feel sick_

_I willfully stayed a non-believer_

_Down to the last second_

Pressure.

Like being squeezed and twisted and molded until you couldn't contort yourself anymore and then being shoved into the cold of winter.

I found I didn't like it.

I found I hated it.

The frigid air on my limbs and the giants that held me were mere monsters taking away my happy emptiness. The pain had come back. My eyes burned and bleed.

There was another scream.

_But even still_

_Somehow…_

_Someway..._

There were no words.

Even if by some miracle I had the ability to form words within myself and make them just _go_, there were absolutely no words for this. There was no explanation I could give. I was so completely and so utterly _lost_.

The giants had named me their child.

The same giant that had ripped away my happy and empty existence held me like I was the answer to world hunger.

Precious.

Irreplaceable.

New.

She smiled at me, and called me her baby.

The other giant was always close. He stood to the side, watching me in vigil, or held me as close as his body would allow. His hands were clumsy and awkward and as big as they felt, nothing like the one who smiled, but he was careful.

Both giants were oh, so careful with me.

And I am so so _so_ lost, because I know exactly why.

_Even as I acknowledge that I am and will forever be the last person in this world and the next to understand how "god" works_

_I am absolutely certain _

"Lily! He's here!"

"JAMES-!"

Thunder echoed in our home.

My giants, my parents, fell with enough force to bring the Earth to its knees. She, who smiled at me and called me her baby and told me as many times as she could that she loved loved _loved_ me, screamed.

I screamed too.

_Even as ignorant as I am_

_Even as a non-believer_

"Avada Kadavra…!!"

_That this is NOT what she had meant_


	2. The Realization

For 6 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days I woke with the dawn. I would creep out of my hovel, silently treck across the floor I had painstakingly cleaned the day before, go infront of the mirror I was not meant to use and _wish._

For what, I wasn't sure. Maybe I wanted to see nothing. Maybe I wanted to see her: the person I'd known for so long that I can no longer reach and can no longer be. Maybe I wanted to see red? It would've been a nice reminder for the sanity I was trying so desperately to keep. A reminder that She was gone and I was now me.

In anycase, everytime I looked he was all I saw.

He had my eyes. It was so silly so rediculious that the one feature that drove me mad as Her gave me so much comfort when I looked at him. Honestly... just what was this world coming to? Him having my "mother's eyes" being my saving grace? If only Her Hermione could see me now... she'd probably laugh.

Though, to be fair, under normal circumstances I'd laugh too.

His hair_. _Oh dear Magick, his _hair. _It was such a lovely color- black as night or a raven's wings- but it behaved about as well as his cousin Dudley. It flipped and settled in the oddest fashions and absolutely refused to behave no matter how much I begged.

In some moments it made me want to laugh. Most of the time it made me want to cry. But the one thing about it that made me want to scream- scream and curse and cry and just curl up and _disappear-_ was that it always, regardless of how misbehaved, fell just a breaths away from his scar.

_The _scar. The one shaped like a bolt of lightening resting on his brow, still tainted with the dark magic used to put it there. It still peaked out from his bangs at an annoying angle, its obstinace disproportionate to its relavance, and it still never wanted to stay hidden.

I wanted it gone. I wanted nothing more than to believe that my duty was done, that my destiny was over with. I mean, it was wasn't it? I tried my best. Even if I didn't do as good as Dumbledore needed me to, I really, really tried.

Even if this- him staring at me my mother's eyes- was because I had failed, just like I did with Tom, I was ok with that. I would take the punishment! I would've happily stayed in this vision, stripped of my identity and magic as the Otherworld required, and endured. For all the souls lost by my ignorance, by my gulability and need for an easy answer and a little love I so surely lacked, I could've endured the misery that was the Dursleys for an eternity. If nothing else I would have paid for my errors properly. The balance that I had tried so hard to restore and maintain would be mended. I... it... it would be ok.

It was with that in mind that for the first 6 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days I would watch him. I would ignore the weight that pinned me down, creep into the Dursleys bathroom just as the sun was rising, wishing for something I couldn't place, and watch him. He never shed a tear, I noticed. No matter how much it hurt.

And it did.

It was painful to see a child once again or to see my eyes stare back at me once more. My skin was as pale as it'd always been so it wasn't like the bruises could hide from me, and I wasn't so deluded to think that my pentance would be painless.

On more than one occasion I found myself wondering how Lily could believe in God of all things growing up with someone like Petunia Dursley. The fact that she did was probably a testament to my dead grandparents. Or maybe it was a testament to Lily herself? I couldn't be sure.

Honestly, I couldn't find it within myself to care.

Just as before: she was taken from me before I could find out and was long, long, long gone.

I was young now. Young enough to still be able to hear the echoes of her voice lulling me to sleep, young enough to curl inside of my cupboard without a large amount of discomfort and dream of a life of one Holly Ann Potter, young enough to trail into lines of thought unbefitting of my age without too much suspicion, and to my indescribable agony... young enough to feel fear as if it was something new.

I was also young enough for accidental magic.

On the morning of year 6, month 9, week 2, day 4, after recieving a beating for turning my teacher's hair blue, I trudged to my mirror ignoring where the sun was and whether or not the Dursleys knew. It didn't matter anymore.

It was on that morning that I watched Hadrian James Potter cry for the first time. And it _hurt_.


End file.
